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Ohio State University has signed an agreement with business-development firm Signet Enterprises
to form a new company, Signet Accel, that will license health-care computer software developed by
Ohio State.

The agreement includes the largest upfront licensing payment in the history of Ohio State:
$275,000, an amount that Signet Enterprises already has paid.

Licensing revenue has been a focus of much concern recently at Ohio State. For years, OSU has
ranked at the bottom among Big Ten universities in creating such revenue.

The agreement with Akron-based Signet Enterprises projects that the new company will generate
several million dollars in licensing fees during the life of the deal. Other details of the
agreement have not been disclosed, including its term.

The new company will license health-care computer software developed during the past decade by
the Department of Biomedical Informatics at OSU’s College of Medicine.

“The folks at the College of Medicine are way ahead of the curve in handling this data,”
Steinmetz said.

The innovative software “is really about breaking traditional barriers to data sharing while
being respectful of confidentiality issues,” said Philip R.O. Payne, chairman of the Department of
Biomedical Informatics and co-founder of the new company along with Peter J. Embi, vice chairman of
the department.

By using the software, researchers can examine massive amounts of data from health organizations
around the world in their search for clues about causes of, and cures for, even the rarest
diseases.

While the idea seems obvious, “most of the good ideas are ones you look at and say, ‘Well, of
course we should do that,’” Payne said. “We haven’t done it before because the technology hasn’t
been mature enough.”

The new company has hired its first employee: Dave Billiter, director of the Informatics Core at
the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. He will join the new company at the end
of March as executive vice president.

“Our company will own it, operate it, install it, service it, do everything — soup to nuts,”
said Signet Chairman Anthony Manna. “It is the Cadillac in this type of industry. We’ll be
capitalizing it and seeing where we can take it. We think it has fabulous future potential.”